MERGER SHE WROTE
Merger She Wrote is a podcast for business owners looking to scale, sell, or transition their companies. Each episode unpacks the strategies behind successful exits, the pitfalls to avoid, and the steps to maximize value. Featuring expert insights and real-world case studies, this podcast helps you navigate the complexities of M&A with confidence. Whether you're planning your next move or just starting to think about the future, Merger She Wrote gives you the knowledge you need to make informed decisions and build a business buyers want.
MERGER SHE WROTE
EP 6 | Are You Leaving Value on the Table?
Building a successful business worth selling requires strategy, resilience, and purpose.
Tyler Copenhaver-Heath shares his extraordinary journey from a humble dirt lot with no electricity to founding a groundbreaking automotive customization company trusted by clients like the Rolling Stones, WWE, and the NFL.
In this episode, Tyler reveals how he defied traditional business norms—reinvesting profits into technology, creating high barriers for competitors, and balancing growth with deep emotional ties to his team. He offers honest insights into the financial and personal challenges of knowing when to let go.
More than just profit, Tyler now champions aligning business with mission and meaning, urging entrepreneurs to look beyond the bottom line for lasting fulfillment.
If you're ready to rethink what truly makes a business valuable, for buyers and for yourself, this conversation is a must-listen.
In the world of business, not all deals are what they seem. Fortunes rise, empires crumble, all with the stroke of a pen. Mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers. Welcome to Mergers, she Wrote, where we examine strategies and stories behind the biggest deals in business, because in M&A, the real risks are the ones you don't take. Welcome to episode six of Merger, she Wrote. Today I am hosting Tyler Copenhaver-Heath. He is a self-made entrepreneur, strategist and podcast producer who's built and sold multiple companies from the ground up. He has a background in biochemistry and an MBA, and he likes to blend analytical thinking with street smart execution to help others grow real businesses. Thanks for being on today.
Speaker 2:Thank you and thank you Chet GPT for that it did a great job Did you justice. There's a couple of things I'm like. Did it, why did it write that? You know not that it's not valid, but I'm like, is that the highlight of my life, you know, so far?
Speaker 1:I feel like the best thing about using chat GDP for your bio is that you don't have to self-censor. It's like, oh, you are amazing.
Speaker 2:Here's this description. I'm analyzing it and be like hey, that's not what I would have chose.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for being on today. And you know, today Tyler and I are going to talk about his background in essentially building successful businesses and then selling them, which is the bread and butter of this podcast, which is talking about mergers and acquisitions. Yeah, tyler, I will let you do your own intro. I know I've done your chat GDP bio, but you know, tell us kind of you know, where you started in this process, how you got into growing, building and selling businesses.
Speaker 2:You know it's interesting. So I'm, I absorb a lot of entrepreneur content right and uh, via podcast or documentary or book or you know whatever. And I think quite often, like all the entrepreneurs are, like I knew I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, it was in my blood. Or you know, like I like I'm so counter that, you know I think I wanted to, but I didn't dare to right and like. So I think that's where I'm super different is I was pushed into my first business, actually pretty begrudgingly and uh and like, luckily enough, um, it ended up becoming something and then changing my life and then, as much as like, every once in a while, I'm like trying to like maybe I don't want to do this entrepreneur thing anymore.
Speaker 2:Um, it always pulls me back in, you know, and it's it's kind of nice that you get to a point where it's like I guess this is what my life is Right, and you know.
Speaker 2:And then you have to adjust it in a way and I've like graduated a long way on like what I think business should be. Then when I just started, you know, it's like when I just started, I think you at least in my case I was so afraid of opening my first business, that I was like I will choose the thing that feels the most comfortable in this phase of I'm so scared of this right. So you think you you go with what you know, and there's a great statistic around that actually you're 70 times more likely to succeed in a business you know, and so that's that wasn't a bad thought. But when I was being pushed into business, I actually had a business that I liked way better, that I would have liked to have entered into. I was just too, I was too afraid in that general, and so I went with what I knew what was it?
Speaker 2:um, while I was in I was attending um, a biochemistry program at ASU, and I took this uh science of uh science and biochemistry of beer brewing and which is funny because I don't drink but I ended up developing a hard cider that I went into. Buddy of mine was the manager for a bar in Old Town and I produced this cider. It looked beautiful, like so marketable you know it's like, and we tried it out on people and they loved it and at the time actually somebody was trying to hire me to be there. They were hard cider production company in Old Town. They were actually trying to hire me to be their chemist and so like I was already like kind of maneuvering in that world.
Speaker 2:I really liked the product old, I really liked the product. I wanted to have a ranch that like kind of held and built the product at the ranch and that's still like one of my favorite ideas. That like actually is going to become my retirement business idea. So but cars is what I had been working in for so long, so cars is what I picked.
Speaker 1:So tell me I know you're like a ground up story about your class so you went from classic custom car builds to this evolution where you changed into like car modifications and car manufacturing of parts right.
Speaker 2:Am I saying that right?
Speaker 1:So tell me like you started in this one space and then it grew and evolved and you said you've been working with cars for quite some time, so this was just like a comfortable spot for you. Yeah, you know, talk more about the evolution of like growing something from the ground up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have. You know, like a big majority of my life now is like working in Glaive, you know, and like that's Glaive does a lot in the pro bono realm to around helping small business underdogs. And I have a three hour story now that I teach about accounting. Um, and like it is literally when I started out in my backyard, right, and like the accounting procedures that I first, at least I knew to do something, you know. But like my accounting procedures at first were have like a Manila folder that held your receipts Right, and that was my way of telling okay, I've got this much money into this car, so I need to get above that when I sell it, right. So I started out by um, I was full-time biochem program. I was full-time, uh, um, working to.
Speaker 2:My father had just got out of prison and so like he, um, he couldn't get a job, so we were living together and like I was a little overwhelmed in life but for some reason I decided I really I'm as a kid I needed a nice car and so I couldn't afford one. So I like found this car on Craigslist or something like that, and everybody was like you want to buy that car. And I'm like, yeah, I want to buy that car and I'd like hold it to my house. And I ended up building the car and people loved it. It to my house. And I ended up building the car and people loved it. And I ended up doing that quite a few times and everybody would be like, why are you going to buy that car? And then when they would see what I would turn it into, they would like they would. They would go faster than I even wanted them to. And so while I'm doing this, I'm stripping paint in the driveway in my house in Scottsdale and the city of Scottsdale is like first run in with compliance issues, which happens in business, can't be stripping paint in the driveway in Scottsdale. And so that like forced my first business. And so I ended up moving um, pretty candid now about my story, but I ended up moving into a dirt lot with no electricity, no running water, um, and at one bay, um dirt floor location, and that my plan was to build what I deemed to be drivable classic cars right, it's like cars that looked good and you would actually still drive them instead of sitting in the showroom floor. And so that started, and quickly.
Speaker 2:You know, I started like paying attention to like what was going on in the automotive space and as far as like new technologies and that sort of stuff, and one of the things that came across was vinyl wraps. Paying attention to like what was going on in the automotive space and as far as like new technologies and that sort of stuff, and one of the things I came across was vinyl wraps. And vinyl wraps at the time were like done by sign shops, for instance, and they like they did them completely different. And at first I was like maybe we can do this instead of paint, you know, because paint's a big laborious process, you have to have a lot of tools and that sort of stuff. And I know, because paint's a big laborious process, you have to have a lot of tools and that sort of stuff and I was like maybe it's an option, you know. And so I started looking into it Not super viable as a swap, but as a product. It got intriguing, right, and so so decided to look at that, and I was the first one in the entire world that I'm aware of, because we got known really well for doing like better customization than anybody in the world on this and one of the ways I approached it was just like painting a car you have to rip the whole car apart.
Speaker 2:As far as I know, we were the first ones in the world to start doing this and approach it this way, because it always been sign shops before. It wasn't custom automotive shops that were doing this and sign shops no offense to those guys. They generally don't know how to pull apart cars. So we would pull apart cars and it would make for the best quality wrap that you could have and we'd throw other stuff on it. We'd lower the car, exhaust all that sort of stuff and we would have like a complete transition in just a couple of days. And so the next thing we knew we had done basically every color on the market. We were at least smart enough to take photos of every single one, put them into our marketing or website and that sort of stuff, and so then, if you looked for a color that your car was going to be, our location popped up.
Speaker 2:Another thing that was kind of interesting and I'm trying to help people as we're journeying today, so I'm telling the story like a little bit more detailed, but like we ended up painting the building, our main building. You know when, when I eventually got to the point where I could afford renting a building and like it had this giant Phoenix and it had our logo in the back, every single color of wrap was in front of that building. To the point, everybody kept asking like what is that place? Right? It's like the place was already known before we even tried, because we had wrapped so many cars, because we were known for doing it well, that every color was out there. Then we became a 3M test facility. So now 3M's testing with us the new films. And so what does that mean? The new colors come on the market. So it ended up being like marketing gold for us, and then people would come to us for everything else, and so we became the only true one-stop shop in the world as far as automotive.
Speaker 2:I stayed in that trailer long past when I had to because I bought the second largest powder coat I've been in the city. I had to because I bought the second largest powder coat I've been in the city. I had a complete wood shop. I had a complete metal shop. I had the second largest dyno in the entire Western United States. You know, it's like I put all that kind of like pain in when most people would have bought the new car or most people would have bought the fancy house. I put that pain into equipment and barriers to entry and I think that was like one of the things that really helped us grow. You know is like being like super reasonable with the way that we would use the incoming money to greater build the company.
Speaker 1:I love that, not just because I feel like a lot of people want to expedite the feeling of having made it right with the purchases that you're talking about. Right, the fancy car, all of these like what I would say quote, unquote. You know status or lifestyle items that you know. You hear about this even in the legal industry. Someone goes out and starts. You know criminal defense firm. You know solo shop.
Speaker 1:First thing they do is buy the beamer yeah and it's like why there's so many other places that you could have reinvested that money in your business that pays dividends later, like just for you know your story as an example. You took all that money and, instead of pursuing status objects that had no real impact in your business, you reinvested that income into things that would cause exponential growth and created this you know one of a kind one stop shop location for you. So I think that is an amazing take home for anyone listening as to, like you know, be smart, right. Don't just pursue what looks good on the outside, because the inner workings of your business can really make or break not only your financial stability, but also how you grow as a business. So I want to go back. Forgive my ignorance about this, but I want to know why do you have to pull apart a car to make the wrap better?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's a very good question. So it's like the way that sign shops used to do. It is like they didn't know how to pull apart the car, right, so what they would do is they just smash wrap can be equated to a very sophisticated sticker, right? Like that doesn't do it much justice, but I want to give you a visual right. And so imagine like you don't know how to pull things off the car, you just stick the sticker on and then you generally cut around it. So this can cause a couple problems. Number one, it's paint damage, right, because if you cut on the car you can cause paint damage. Number two, it's like they're cutting around things like emblems and things like that. So emblems come off, door handles come off, you know. Bumper comes off, you know. All these things come. Every piece of the car comes off, and then that way you can get the sticker inside of every crevice right, nook and cranny, and it makes it. So. It's seamless too. You want the seamless.
Speaker 2:When we wrapped a car, you couldn't tell the difference between paint and a wrap, right? That was the goal, right? If you don't pop apart the car, then you're going to find all kinds of seams in there because they had to, or generally they'd cut around an emblem, or you know something like that. They're done like it's it's crazy, but night and. Or you know something like that. They're done like it's it's crazy, but night and day difference. You know, like in the ability, once you pop a pop and you can think of it this intuitively too. If you were out to there in the parking lot and we just decided we were going to paint your car right now and we're going to tape off your door, handles and stuff, isn't it going to leave little areas that we're like, when we pull the tape off, that you can see and that sort of stuff? So why do you? You pull every component off the car. Now you can spray the entire car and then you don't have any missing pieces, right?
Speaker 1:Nice, okay, thanks for that. That educational piece on customizing.
Speaker 2:I wrote a book on it, so cool yeah.
Speaker 1:Very cool. Um, I didn't know that Uh can people buy it on like Amazon.
Speaker 2:They can. I feel bad. Anybody that wants to go through that? No, it's. If you're into wrapping cars, we were hired by there's a company called CarTech. It was a tremendous honor. They approached me to write a book for them. They've been like before. You know, chatgpt or Google was a thing. That's where you learn to build a car. That's where you learn to build an engine transmission. Whatever is CarTech books? Right. And so CarTech asked me to write a book on vehicle wrapping. Nice, yeah.
Speaker 1:Cool, okay, so back to your evolution you talked about being in your dirt lot for way longer than you needed to. And I think one of the key questions that most business owners ask themselves and I think it's a struggle, it's an internal struggle a lot of times is when do I make the next big investment in my business? When do I scale? When do I start making what is arguably maybe a little bit more of a riskier choice? Right, because you have to double down and I would think for most people who are brick and mortar going from something that's truly affordable, maybe not optimal as a space, and realizing that you've outgrown the space or you need a better space, but then that new space is a significant investment Could you speak, maybe, to like what? What can someone who's a business owner that's in the process of scaling used to determine when the time is right?
Speaker 2:I would say in response why be a gambler? And it's not something I really understood at the time, but it's something I understand so well now. If you are going to, or even when you start your business, it's like that's what a business plan is right. And most people like, if they're opening a landscaping company, they're not going to do an 85-page business plan, right, but at least jotting it down I say playing house or playing business at least jotting down, okay, what's available as far as locations, what's the cost of this location, what's the product I'm going to sell, what's the margin on this product, what is it going to cost for internet, what's it going to cost for insurance? Doing all this stuff and putting it out there and then, like playing with that model, it's like, okay, I would have to sell 7 858 cookies to afford this location. Do I think that's plausible? Right, and you can ask yourself okay, can I do that? Right? And you could do some market research to see if that's plausible and that would be more educatedly approaching a system in your business. Already you could do the same thing. I wasn't smart enough to do this then, right In the first initial steps, you know.
Speaker 2:But, like, intuitively, I knew a problem. I'll tell this powder coating story. So we uh, one of the big ways to customize a car right is wrap, and then the wheels want to change color. So what's the best way to change the wheel color? It's called powder coat, right, and so the tire has to come off. It's basically treated with this powder and the powder is baked onto the wheel and it makes it very, very durable, right, that's what everybody wanted. So originally we were subbing that out, right, and we had a lot of customer service problems because they would say it's gonna be five days and they ended up being 10. And even when we're like telling people, like okay, it's going to be 15, you know, because we were like leading with their curve, it would be 20. And the next thing, you know, we have anger in our face, and so I got so frustrated by that that I'm like, eventually, like I'm just gonna buy my own part of coding setup, and we did, and it became a tremendous barrier to entry to other people.
Speaker 2:If I was smart, yes, there was the X factor, the customer service component. I needed to weigh that into the equation. But I also needed to weigh in what was the margin right? And I'm going to put out, you know, x for my powder coating equipment, you know. And what is the Y result? I will get how many wheels and I had already some market research because I was already doing it how many wheels am I doing a week? What can I charge for those wheels? What's my margin going to be? When does that catch up to the entry cost of that powder coating system? Right.
Speaker 2:But then also you have to realize in the back of your head the other factors, like I mentioned, customer service and building value into your business, right. But then there's some why factors. It's like okay, any new product you add is going to cause more complexity. You have to train your staff. You're going to have inevitably some things that don't go right in the beginning because it's not well processed. So it's weighing all that out and that's why I say it's it's it's it's educatedly jumping into a um improvement in your business.
Speaker 2:For all those reasons, you know, and not gambling right, tyler gambled in the fact that powder coats oven was a good idea. It ended up being phenomenal idea. I could have done it smarter. What was the cost of it? How long is it going to take to pay a bag? You know that sort of stuff it's like, and so that's what I would implore business people to do.
Speaker 2:Yes, make improvements in your business. You know Warren Buffett's famous for compounding. You know it's like you put money in over time it becomes X, right. You can compound into your business too by setting up the right, and I'm so like. There's so many different ways to go. You know like, but it's like, um, in general, adding like uh benefits to your business adds more revenue to your business, adds more equipment to your business. You're, in essence, building more valuable business right now.
Speaker 2:On the other side of that and I now I'm going off on a tangent, but it's like you could be building a problem too If it's too far out of your wheelhouse, if it's something that doesn't make sense, you know it's like, but going back to it, it's like educatedly, think about it, model the numbers right. It's going to cost this much, how much? How much time is it going to take to repay it? And the other thing I'll add to that you know it's like cause I hope this stuff is helpful is when I started to compartmentalize my business to some extent and really start like I learned costing systems in my MBA program. Um, like when I started to do that, it gave me such enlightenment into what my business was actually doing and pulling the right levers from there, you know, really helped me improve the valuation of my business, realize what the actual winning systems were and then double down on the systems that were winning really well right.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. I think a couple of things to pull out from that story that you're telling us is one and I hear this a lot in just the entrepreneurial world generally is that there are so many people that build it and hope people will come. Yeah, and it's the actual inverse of that is what makes things successful. Right, and you touched on this, which is that you need to do market research. You need to think about your time and your money investment and how you make a return on it and how long it'll be for that ROI. Because how you make a return on it and how long it'll be for that ROI Because you know, I was going kind of down a rabbit hole one day on online learning platform businesses right.
Speaker 1:And because, inevitably, anyone who's in the service-based industry has knowledge to share, right. And so my thought was like, oh, it'd be really cool to come up with some you know online courses that I could put together for business owners or for people in my you know industry or you know. I was like kind of playing around with this idea, and the more I delved into people sort of talking about their journey, talking about the process, all I could think of was like how do you know that you're not going to spend you know a hundred plus hours building this course? You know paying for the platform, getting it edited, getting it published, advertising it, cause people don't know it exists, right, maybe you have an existing email list, but it's probably not like the broader general public that you want to be marketing to. How much of that is like you're just, like you said, gambling. At the end of the day, you know, and that's where.
Speaker 2:So, like I just told my story and it worked. You know, I have a building that I was renting in Missouri and the lady, anytime a customer had told her they needed something or desired something, she would automatically get on that Right. It's like I remember one client said hey, it would be nice if you had an ice cream stand in here. You know, it kind of reminds me of that Jerry Seinfeld episode where he makes a boo, change the uh, the. You can't change and be everything to everybody. And, yes, you need to get feedback from your clients. But at the same time, opening an ice cream stand and putting a $15,000 investment Cause one person tells you ice cream would be nice here would be a horrible idea.
Speaker 2:Most often, like you're better off and this is where new entrepreneurs, I think, especially struggle, struggle, but it's like you're better off doubling down on the product that's really working to your point, as opposed to trying to go find new stuff. Or what I find a lot of times because I do a ton of business consulting is this product isn't working at all, this business isn't working, so I'm going to try all these other things to fix that thing that's not working right, instead of figuring out the way this is going to work right, or abandoning it, maybe, and making it work for something else. And so in the course dilemma, it's like you also have to weigh out your opportunity cost, what you desire to, and people don't weigh this out enough as an X factor. What do you actually want to do with your life? Right? If the answer is, someday you want to be a course guru, you know, like, and you want to like work that way, great.
Speaker 2:If you like hate being online presence, you know, then that's probably not a good path to go. Right, you know it's like, and like something like legal is always changing too, so you'd have to keep up on that, you know it's like some of the stuff would be evergreen. Some of the stuff would not be, you know, and so like, really thinking through and strategizing and planning is important, no matter what you know and I've given a couple of different values to the audience on both but like really smart strategy and deduction of, um, uh, what is working and what is not, which means you have to know your financials.
Speaker 1:Oh, a hundred percent there's.
Speaker 2:there's no other way to do it. Otherwise it's guessing, right, yeah, and like a lot of times, if you can get into something and start to explore some financials, you know it's like is this working? Like in our case, the powder coating thing, we were already new financials on it, we were already doing a lot of it. Right, it was just going to a subcontractor. It's like it was a very smart move for us to say, okay, now we can make a bigger margin, make our clients happier. It was like and then we added a lot of value to the business because we had the second largest powder and that, actually the second part largest powder coating system in the state added a lot of like big opportunities for us, you know, and so, but weighing that out between it was outside of the original product lines, you know is like was it worth it to add, you know? And so there's two sides to that story. Yes, it could be beneficial. The other side, it could kick your ass, you know.
Speaker 1:Well, I think too, like the one thing you said about the ice cream stand. You know the lady who's like going to put in the ice cream stand because one customer was like, oh, it'd be great to have ice cream in here.
Speaker 1:I think there's, like you said, two sides to the coin, not only with deciding whether implementing a new product or a new revenue you know, avenue is a good idea but also this idea that you ask right, if you're going to expand your offerings, you go and you ask your customers or your clients like what would be better, what would you like, what do you wish that we had?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And I think the ice cream story highlights that you can't take everybody's feedback as like the gospel, right, you've got to, like you know, survey and you'll maybe find some themes, but you're not going to be like, oh, there's all these disparate items that sound great in theory and I'm just going to implement them because two, three people said them to me, right?
Speaker 2:What's Henry Ford's thing is like. If I asked the clients what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. You know it's so like you, you do want to take into account, like what's good for your clients, but you really, really want to be good with data and you got to know your financials before you take any steps. And quite often, the best businesses out there in the world are the most simple too. It's like we sell a candy bar over and over again. We know exactly what your margin and if you're new to business, I implore you to start with as simple a model as possible, because you know that's one thing I noticed in my like we had the custom automotive business is the worst business model on the planet. Like knowing what I know about business. Now I would like kick myself and lock him in a room not to do it right. I ended up being able to outwork the bad business model right, but it had so many problems with what could be the best business model, right. It's like a lot of like X factors, variables that you can't control. You want to control as many of those things as possible. You want your margins to be super simple. You want your processes to be super repeatable, all of which is not done in the custom automotive business. We're inventing things on the daily that have never existed before, you know, and so like. So it just depends on what you want out of it too.
Speaker 2:Like those out there that want to be on the custom automotive business because they absolutely love being around cars and being creative and things like that, yes, do it. If you want to build the next like Tesla, no, that's not the right way to do it right. No, that's not the right way to do it right. Or if you just want to be in business to make the money, then don't give yourself the heartache of some guy's $400,000 car that he likes more than his kid. Right, I mean the amount of liability in the custom automotive space $400,000 car and we're going to put $1,000, $2,000 worth of work into it. It's insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know it's like, so know why you're getting into a business and what you're doing too, and that's something I didn't know when I started. Right, I didn't think about all these things.
Speaker 1:No, a hundred percent. And I I feel like I have to have that talk sometimes with my clients that are looking to purchase businesses as first-time business owners and, granted, it is a wonderful feeling to just plug in right Something's built, there's a brand, there's existing customers, but there are so many businesses in the Valley that have that layer and an issue to them with the liability, the hidden liability or the more obvious liability, Like there are tons of medical spas in the Valley and there's plenty of medical spas that are for sale, and some of them are crushing it.
Speaker 1:But think about if you are new to the aesthetics space and you're going to now own a business where if somebody screws up an injection it's on someone's face Like think about the bad PR, Think about the liability, Think about the things that I mean. It's so high risk, right, as a first time business owner, maybe that's not right for you. Right, you had said do what you know, and I feel like there are so many people that go out there and buy businesses and it's like it's not anything they know.
Speaker 2:No, it's, it's kind of crazy and like it's funny. When you first started journey, you're like I'm just going to do this because I know it. Right, I know cars, you know it's like. But now, like knowing what I know, it's like, I think way more about liabilities and processes. Right, processes are repeatable. Right, it allows you to do the same thing over and over again, expecting the same result. Right, it's like that's the best way to have a good business model.
Speaker 2:And liabilities are something nobody thinks about. Right, it's like in their initial businesses. It's like I give the $400,000 car example. That's foolish If we just write that on paper. Hey, if you're going to take on a $400,000 liability and get paid a thousand dollars, is that worth it? Right, it's like it's insane when you put it that way. You know it's like.
Speaker 2:So like, if people are like out there looking for like a business to buy, you know it's like you definitely want to look into like liabilities and processes and financials. You know, if the person I'm not trying to teach people how to buy a business, but me personally if I'm going to go out and buy your business, I'm going to look at your financials, I'm going to look at how savvy you are, at least if you have a decent CBA that's backing you up. What are the liabilities in the business? What are the past problems that you've had? What's the ability to hire new employees, because a lot of them are probably going to leave right away? Custom automotive space there's like 10 people in the world that do decent upholstery work. Right, they leave. You're screwed, you know. And so like looking into those things that people never think about, right, they think about oh, it'd be nice to do this. It's like they don't think about processes, liabilities, employees, you know that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:No, a hundred percent. I feel like the retention of key employees is a piece that is so often overlooked, not just because attrition is a problem always right. You change ownership and inherently you're going to have people that bail because they just don't like the unknown. They don't know who the new guy is going to be. They don't know if they're going to like what's the new setup. Who's you know how they're going to be paid, things like that.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:But I think there's also this false sense of security when you're buying a business and there's all of these employees and you know that you might lose some, but if you don't start negotiating with them. I actually just had this conversation about how, when is the right time as and this was on the sell side when was the right time to make the decision to tell the employees hey, we're going to sell, it's happening, whether you like it or not.
Speaker 1:We appreciate the years of service and loyalty that you've given us. But you know we're not going anywhere right away. We're going to help with the transition. We'll still be around. You know kind of help, the transition feel more natural. But hey, you have someone who's going to be your new employer and it became this kind of like hot debate about when do you pull the ripcord on it?
Speaker 1:right, because you're worried to your point that you tell the employees too early, people start jumping ship and then it could sabotage the deal because the buyer thinks they're going to keep all those employees and vice versa. You know we had the discussion of they show up on Monday, which is closing day, and you rip the bandaid off in the morning and everybody just has to deal with it on the day of. And I'm like I don't think either one of them is great. Right, there's pros and cons to each, but certainly ripping the bandaid off on closing day is not the right way to go in my opinion.
Speaker 2:No, me, neither. You know. It's interesting too. It's like I go and listen to a lot of people speak and things like that, or like I read the book on one of the founders of Netflix and they all talk about like this initial, which was a struggle for me because I loved my people so much. There's this initial stage of people you start with. That is not going to be the one that gives you the end zone. You know and I listened to this lovely woman that's built this huge, huge company at this tech summit I was just at and she said just that too, and you could tell her like it hurts her still. She wanted to cry that she had to get rid of her original team. You know, so you have to also know when did that? It can be a bonus. If the owner was hanging on to their original team at times that isn't prepared to take the thing to the next step, they can actually be holding the company back right.
Speaker 1:It's so true.
Speaker 2:So, and I don't think enough people think about that. So sometimes the loss of some of those employees is actually a good thing, because the owner has been hanging on to them with this right. They haven't been good for the business for a long time. So there's that side of the coin. I try to get people to think about the different sides of the coin. And or the other thing is you have great employees and if you treat great employees, continue great, give them opportunities when you come in and approach it the right way, there's no reason for them not to continue on Right, and a lot of times the owner's pretty burnt out by the end of it too and they're ready to get rid of it Like new energy. If you do it right, I think can be a huge improvement. I mean with our businesses.
Speaker 1:I had two locations. I could open a third and a fourth, but I couldn't find enough people Right. So like the constraints of people are in the earlier part of your story, where you know you got the, the powder coating machine or whatever you want to call it. I was thinking of it like looking at it as like a kiln.
Speaker 2:It's a huge oven.
Speaker 1:It's essentially a type of kiln but, like you know, having to teach people how to utilize it, the new process, all of that I mean as a business owner, whether you're new and you're starting to hire your first employees, or you're evolving and changing like you did in your story, you still have the headache of finding and retaining good talent and I think people underestimate I mean. You know, onboarding new employees and training them is arguably a full-time job.
Speaker 2:It's the hardest part. Employees hands down are the hardest part. You know I started as a solo man operation and at its peak we had 47 employees. You know it's like that hands down the hardest part. You know it's like the amount of work that goes into the people. You know, and rightly so, the people are the business, you know, and so like. But it's yeah, like finding the right talented staff and finding people that care. You know, like that's number one with me, like if they care, you know if they're.
Speaker 2:You know I used to one of my tests that I love to do and I hope I actually can't get in trouble for saying this is like I had this open lot that had all kinds of garbages in it, right, and like huge amount, and my favorite thing to do in this world was take some of my favorite employees down to that lot and clean it up 120 degrees. You know it's like. And the ones that would keep a good mood through that, those are the best people. So if I could vet employees in the way that I want to, they'd go out there and work with the boss for a day in like some horrible hard task and I would watch their personality. I'd also watch to see if they try to beat me, because they do try to beat me, right they. I can't let them beat me.
Speaker 2:You know I have to outwork them every single time but I can't believe the amount of value that showed me. You know, when you can keep a good mood because it can be fun actually and I know it sounds miserable 120 degrees dirty you know you can make it fun with the right people. It's all about the right people. So building your business in that way and I had some amazing people, you know it's like some still to this day. You know it's like I think about that was the hardest thing in selling your first company is leaving the people. I actually hung on to it probably five years longer than it lined with me and, you know, because I didn't want to leave the people.
Speaker 1:I can understand that. I mean they're a version. I mean you get the right people in that you've worked with for years. They're a version of family, right, they're an extended a family that you weren't born into but that you built through trust and hard work. And I like the fact that, at the end of the day, you know doing this miserable task of like cleaning up this lot is all about, about resilience, right attitude, the.
Speaker 1:The drive to try and beat you is to like you know, let's impress the boss by doing more yeah um all of these traits that are essentially like go-getter traits right and show that that person is not only driven in their day to day life but also want to make good impressions and be a part of the team, and it's not just a means to an end right for them. It's not just a paycheck at the end of two weeks or a week or however long you know it's like with some good people there's no task.
Speaker 2:that's and you know, in business, business is really hard and like um, very stressful, you know. And so like having the right people around you that are supportive instead of you know like, um, anti-productive is super important, right. And then, like a side note here is like early on, I was one of those people that like, and I still am, it's like I hated firing people, hated doing it. I would think of all the things. You know it's like they've got a family, they got kids. You know it's like even if they like I caught one guy stealing, I still gave him another chance, which was horrible.
Speaker 2:You know, like it's such an awful lesson and you say, how could you do that? It's like I was thinking about all the things that I shouldn't have been, but in the end, it's like you're punishing the good people by keeping the bad people, and that's the way I finally had to reframe it, as a big hearted person is like Tyler. Your big heart is actually, you know, like causing damage to your good people, you know. And so like thinking about that. And so it's like when you come in to to go like, manage a new business, it's important you look at who's, who's the who's the good hearted, good nature hearted looking people, and then you take people out of the system that are going to be counterproductive to their mind right.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I mean think about it from like a schooling perspective. You always in school get assigned the group project.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You've got the leader, the person who's going to like pull the team and give direction. You've got the worker bees, the people who are going to really put in the effort, and then, inevitably, you've got one or two dead anchors that don't do their job. Other people end up doing it for them. And at the end of the project, what does everyone feel? That did the work? Absolute resentment, right? So like? The idea of keeping the bad eggs are arguably in a different realm creates this resentment even in your business, which is not good for your bottom line right, no, and like whether people probably know it or not, depending on what level they are in business or what stage they are.
Speaker 2:It's like we're dropping gold. As far as like buying the new business and what to watch out for. You know, and see, these are all the things that I would tell somebody if they were going to go purchase a business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, absolutely Okay. So I think, before we move on to the evolution of you selling the business, I wanted to go back and say you talked about the company. That was like selling the one thing the candy bar and I think what a lot of people, when they're scaling or growing or even just starting a business and wanting to eventually sell, right, because a lot of people have this long-term vision of I'm going to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to start this business. I'm going to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to start this business, I'm going to grow it to be successful and then I'm going to exit for multiple millions. And that's my dream and I think a lot of people are.
Speaker 1:They get kind of caught up in this idea that it's all about building revenue and they lose track of the idea that you hear the slogan like the riches are in the niches, right, picking something specific, getting really good at it. You can't. What is that other phrase? It's like a jack of all trades, master of none, right. And so, like you're entering the marketplace and maybe you get known for this one thing Maybe it's not the thing you wanted or intended, but it's the thing that works and this idea that you're going to try and like, evolve and change, to do do more, add more or be more in a already saturated market, I think puts you on this path of mediocrity. It doesn't mean you fail, but I think it. It it straddles and not straddles. It prevents you from uh, really growing in a upward, you know hockey stick trajectory.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think if we were to take a poll of all the like most successful businesses in the world, they really start out fundamentally very hyper-focused on one thing and then they eventually get to where they add some more to it. But that, like with new entrepreneurs, including myself, you know it's like you're like okay, but we can do this, and and they're here so we could do this getting better, you know, and like better. A lot of times it's just a better experience. That's what people don't realize either. They they asked me all the time like Tyler, how'd you start with like nothing and build this company? And it's like, well, one of the key components was the first 50 clients that walked in the door, hugged me on the way in right, it was like they sent clients in. We spent in the entire time we had that company. We spent less than a thousand dollars a year on marketing.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:And I had clients like the Rolling Stones, the WWE, the NFL, you know it's like. And it was less than a thousand dollars a year because we took such good care of people. And then we got smart with all the free tools in the world. When you start your business with $4,000 in a dirt lot, you get pretty savvy about what smart marketing is. That's free. There's so much free marketing but we're so quick to go out there and hire the guy for $10,000 that doesn't even know what they're doing. They're going to do some ad spend or something like that.
Speaker 2:You know my organic stuff will beat your ad spend any day of the week, right, but it takes more work. So the more work is the thing that people avoid, right. And then in a business sale I came in, it's like when you sell your business and you're like, hey, we get a 40,000 hits on our website a month, you know, and we're a small, localized business, number a hundred thousandth hit website in the country, you know it's like that is so much value in. You know, like that people don't realize that you're not building value in the ad spend, you're building value in organic right, and that means every component of the business, that's, your financial systems. You know I always tell people too, like, write a book for your business. I hate calling it Bible, but write a Bible for your business. The processes, the systems, the marketing, you know all this stuff. You know have a direct, intentional process for each thing that you do in the business.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent, okay, well, it sounds like we have a whole nother episode to record about marketing.
Speaker 1:So we'll put a pin in that, because I would love to go down that road. But I want to finish our conversation about you putting your business up for sale and that and what that looked like, right? Because so one of the things that I think, even coming from the business attorney perspective, I get to see behind the curtain constantly right, I'm the person who's drafting the contracts, I'm putting the deal terms on paper, essentially making the deal close, come alive. Right, I'm helping people make the dream come true. But in that process I have, I think, in a lot of ways become blind to some of, like, the thoughts and processes that are happening in my, you know, business clients mind when they're, you know, leading up to this.
Speaker 1:I want to sell, I'm, I'm heading towards retirement, I'm tired of what I'm doing now. I want to change gears, but I have something successful and I can cash out. I'm happy to make those you know put things on paper, help them negotiate to get more of the pie. But I'm not necessarily, you know, seeing it firsthand, the emotional turmoil, the like how does this impact me future wise? I'd love to have you kind of talk more about you know, what was the deciding factor for putting it up for sale. You know, what was the deciding factor for for putting it up for sale. How did the sale process go from your perspective as a business owner? And then you know, post sale, if you could give one or two things that you like wish you had done differently, or something, had you know, maybe a lesson learned or whatever something, something that someone who's a current business owner could take away from it, what would that be? And I'm that's like three questions in one.
Speaker 2:No, and like my answer is going to be so much different, I think, than most people is like I was in school for a biochemistry program. Right, and the reason I was in a school for biochemistry program is like I wanted to. I read a book called Silly White Girl or no. It was an article and S silly white girl was about this girl that goes to africa and she um starts building schools with her friends during the day and then she wakes up in the middle of night. She sees that the locals are actually dismantling what they built the night before and fixing it right, and so she realized what they were doing was playing volunteer. So my search in biochemistry, and she basically comes home and she says, hey, if you don't have a skill, stay at home and fundraise, because you're no value, you know. And so I, young man, I didn't want to stay at home and fundraise, I wanted to have a skill. So I started approaching biochemistry and I was tracking either pre-med or veterinary, you know, and I only had started the business. Like I said, my plan was to start the business because I was being forced kind of into it. Anyways, I still went to college the whole time in my first year in business, by the way, and graduated. So it's possible, mark Zuckerberg, you know, and so like the, it was never the plan to own the business forever In my mind. I was going to own it for two years, I was going to sell that and that's how I was going to fund graduate school. You know, and I hit my goal. It was easily worth in the first two years what I could have sold for graduate school.
Speaker 2:But then you get tied into like the building of the business I had worked so hard. You know it's like literally I like I don't want people to like I have a hard time with the poor me story in the back lot, but I want to. The only reason I say that is because then everybody knows that they can do it too Right, like there's not a person out there in the world that can start, that can't start on a back lot with $4,000 and do something Right. But it takes a lot of damn work. It takes 120 hour weeks. It takes like foregoing the dating. I didn't date for five years. You know it's like I know I'm making entrepreneurship sound awesome right now. It's like like I one of the ways that I would like get ahead on my.
Speaker 2:My competitor was the richest man in the entire state, right, it's like, and we kicked their butts. You know it was like, and one of the reasons we kicked their butts I'm convinced of it is because I was under the car at Friday night at 11 o'clock at night, right, and I was in the office again answering the phone when the WWE happened to call me on Saturday morning. It was like do you know the answer to the WWE? How did we get them? I answered the phone on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 2:So it's like you start out and you have a hard time giving something up and I had worked so hard, it was really hard, but I had lost my way. I was working in this first world business, you know it's like, and I remember like. A key component for me was we had a guy who's um, we had this machine that built racing stripe kits and we were supposed to put those on for this guy and I actually even picked him up. I remember that morning and something manufactured with the machine he I kid you not, he literally cried because his car was going to be a day late cried. And when you're up at night and your original intention was to help people in this world and you're reading books like helping hurts when helping hurts, and probably watching documentaries like poverty. My mind was screwed up in the fact that this, like what I was doing in life, was so unessential Right, and so it like was. It was hurting me for a long time and like I almost just walked off quite a few times and like said see you later to this stuff and through that process, the only reason I stuck around was the employees right, and I should have left the business five years before easily. The problem is I learned so much in the second five years, you know, and that's when they became a really good accountant. That's when we had a business burn down. That's when we had been robbed. That's when we had four lawsuits from like unfair things, like a guy falling off a building on a roof that I didn't even own that I got sued for. You know, it's like all those learning lessons are now what I use today.
Speaker 2:The pivotal moment that I finally got rid of the business I'm pretty candid with it now my doctors told me I had to. It took that to finally surrender the business, right, and COVID had happened. We happened to have our best year ever. That year, it was just time in every single way. When the world gives you a year that I've been told to write a book about, how many more signs do you need that it's time to go? And your health's going too. Your health is everything.
Speaker 2:And so I realized that, yes, I'm an entrepreneur, but I also have to be in alignment with what I think is important, because I'll always be a hard worker right, and that is gonna be my thing. That kills me probably in the end. I might as well work hard in something that, yes, makes money, it's important you can't help anybody if you're not helping yourself but also has alignment to some greater cause. And my first business did not have that. My second business did not have that. My third business did not have that. My fourth, fifth and sixth do Right, and so you graduate as a person while you're graduating, a business you know, and so, like, figuring out what aligns to you will make it impossible to quit Right.
Speaker 1:I love that and I think, also highlighting the fact that there I think entrepreneurial culture is that you inevitably rise and grind and you lose yourself to your business, and that's what's applauded, that's what's championed, is that you know, you, you have this storyline of you really gave up everything to make this business successful. And I think there are so many people who enter into the entrepreneurial space and because they are hard workers, they are type A right. You're not an entrepreneur without having that be a part of your personality, because you have to be driven, you have to wake up and be able to self-start something every single day. You don't have a boss stepping over your shoulder and going like, where's the time sheet right?
Speaker 1:So you've got to have that drive, and inevitably it's the perfect storm for most of us, myself included, to kind of look, look up one day from your desk or wherever you're working and say, where did all this time go? Cause I've lost the balance, I've lost the perspective and, yes, I've built something amazing, but where is the other parts of my life that I've neglected, whether that's your health, whether it's your, you know, family and friends? Um, you know I. I hear, unfortunately, you know, working with business owners. All the time I hear the horror stories of, like, you know, two divorces, um, don't.
Speaker 1:You know kids are estranged? Um, you know, have have multiple millions of dollars, have a house in, you know Bermuda or whatever. You know got all this luxury and you got no one to share it with because you've ostracized all of the most important people in your life in the process. And so I love what you said, because it truly highlights that you can build something absolutely successful that in the eyes of the general public, looks like a hundred, you know million dollars and you know luxury everywhere, but deep inside, is that really what makes you happy?
Speaker 2:Having alignment to like really important mission in alignment, you know, and like people don't realize here's the hack to business is finding something. That's both you know and like I'm kind of like little infamous for saying that. Don't do something you love in this world, do something you hate. Open a business that solves that thing. You hate, you know, and I make it really dramatic, you know. But it can be like I hate the fact that you can't get a good burger with good customer service, because that's your thing, right, it's like it can be a mission. And then you happen to like, uh, also like sponsor the softball team. You know it's like have something in there that has some value. And not only that, but in this world the kids especially want to hold businesses accountable and I love that. You know they want to know we're from something. So the best marketing you can now do is, in your business, be a person of value that has a business of value that's worth more than just the money that it creates, and I don't want to get past like you have to make the money. You know that's where people get lost. Yeah, like Tyler is not a charity guy. I actually don't open any charities, you know it's like I open businesses that make impacts, collateral, positive impacts, and if you'll do those things, your life will be more important. I'm not the person to talk to for balance. I always tell people it's like hey, you take away, you know, like Steve jobs Steve jobs, incredible businessman A lot of what I've learned about his life. I don't want to model him Right. I don't want to model him in every single way. I want to take things right, you know, and so like I am not the model for how to have balance in life. You know I was born with an unfair amount of grit and anger, right, and I use that right, and there's a time for that.
Speaker 2:Initially, in your first business, I think you have to work a lot, right, I don't care what anybody's telling you out there, you know you have to work a lot, but then, like, the trick is knowing when to pull off the gas, not losing your family along the way. You know it's like. The other thing is like and this is a super unpopular thing to say is realize when you're being selfish or not. The entrepreneurial road is not for everybody. You know I would.
Speaker 2:Okay, tyler's a hero because he started in a dirt lot with no electricity and opened a business. You know, now Tyler made his family move into a dirt lot while he tried to start this business. You know, it was like I'm not a hero anymore, right, like that. Your environment too, you know, and what you're where you're at in life. Make sure your family's secure, you know. Make sure you're taking care of your family. If you can do the business thing along with it, then do it Right, but also be very cognizant of like. There is importance beyond the money in life, right, so A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, so we're. We're unfortunately out of time. I knew this was going to happen because Tyler and I could talk like in perpetuity. But, um, what is one either book or podcast or resource, uh that you know, as a business owner who's either trying to build in order to exit at some point in the future, um, or just starting out and looking to exit, you know, way down the road? What's a resource that you would recommend to somebody?
Speaker 2:Very, it's going to surprise you. Okay, the book Man's Search for Meaning.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Get your business idea in your head and read that book. Is it a mission purpose alignment? Is it getting you to a mission purpose alignment? Because you're going to build this, uh the business, and sell it and that next thing is going to be amazing, you know like, have it a mission purpose alignment either in the business or in the future life plan, um, and you will not fail. That's why that is the best business book you could ever read, because it has to.
Speaker 1:Isn't that book really really sad?
Speaker 2:it is sad.
Speaker 1:I remember reading that book. It is terribly sad.
Speaker 2:Prepare yourself if you go down that road it in essence is like and that's why like to use it in the business world is like, very uncommon. This is more like life thing. But I think if your business can have more meaning beyond just the monetization, then that is the true key to success. Because, let's face it, not everybody's like full of grit and piss and vinegar, right, so you need things that keep you tracking. It is impossible.
Speaker 2:It's very easy to quit a YouTube's 10 ideas for business 2026. You didn't even come up with that, right. And then, when it's not money immediately and vacations immediately, you're like I'm done, you know. But if you've like tied it to something that's greater purposed, then you won't quit, right, because now it's a life mission and I like that's the part that I like to get out to people the most, and it can be anything. It can be a landscaping business where it just happens to send the landscapers in its open capacity over to the old folks home, right, like, and also like people will love you for that. It can be both, you know, like there's not a business out there right now that I can talk about. That couldn't be both Right, and so make it be both.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, I will. Uh, thank you for being on, and we'll definitely have to have another episode at some point in the future, because I feel like there were so many things that we could have been talking about and we didn't have time. Thank you for tuning in. Please like, subscribe or comment so that we can learn more about what you might want to listen to on Mergers. She Wrote.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:In the world of business. Not all deals are what they seem. Fortunes rise, empires crumble, all with the stroke of a pen. Mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers Welcome to Mergers. She Wrote where we examine strategies and stories behind the biggest deals in business, because in M&A, the real risks are the ones you don't take.